Kontiki specializes delivery

Video is one of the most effective ways to communicate with employees, partners, and customers. It's convenient and efficient for viewers and carries an impact that is second only to being there. Yet for all its advantages, this medium is still a hard sell to CIOs and IT managers -- mainly because moving large multimedia files saps network bandwidth, often impeding business-critical applications.

Kontiki DMS (Delivery Management System) addresses this shortcoming, efficiently dispensing audio, video, and any other kind of file by tapping the unused bandwidth of networked PCs and servers. Video publishers -- such as corporate communication, training, and support departments -- will benefit most from Kontiki DMS’ clever architecture, which allows them to deliver full-screen video to viewers throughout an organization without requiring network upgrades.

With DMS 3.0, Kontiki gives special attention to video and rich-media distribution. For example, there’s one-button publishing of Microsoft Producer 2003 presentations. Other key changes in this version include secure and virus-checked content delivery, narrowcasting to select groups, and more flexible grid management that lets IT managers control content routing to further contain costs.

Publish and Deliver

DMS 3.0 consists of four modules -- Network Publisher, Network Protector, Network Manager, and Kontiki Analyzer -- that are available as a hosted service or run from servers inside an organization. (I tested both versions.) A single, unambiguous, Web-based user interface lets staff access the appropriate application to publish and automate content delivery. Moreover, content is represented by URLs, so it’s easy to embed links in e-mail messages or Web pages.

I spent less than an hour creating user accounts and placing individuals in appropriate roles. For instance, content publishers were granted access to Network Publisher, while IT administrators received control over Network Manager. Bulk upload, an important feature, let me import users from a Microsoft directory server, contributing to the fast and trouble-free setup.

Publishing digital content -- such as video, audio, and Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents -- follows a natural flow. I merely uploaded my files and ran Network Publisher’s quick publish process. To complete the cycle, I sent the access URL to an e-mail distribution list. Clicking on the link prompted recipients to install Kontiki’s Delivery Manager software and join the relay network (one-time steps); files were then automatically checked for viruses and downloaded in the background.

Other delivery options let me push critical communications directly to all users (or to particular groups), embed content links on Web pages for on-demand viewing, and create subscriptions to deliver content on specific topics to users automatically. I especially liked the ability to schedule precise delivery dates and times -- and the option to expire content.

For performance testing, I chose 50 colleagues in different North American locations who were on different LAN segments and network connections. As users joined the grid, the efficiency of Kontiki’s architecture was very apparent. For example, after the first user downloaded a 90MB video file (which took about 10 minutes from the hosted Kontiki server), others on a local high-speed segment retrieved the video file from the closest local PCs in one-third the time.